About Brum

In typical style, I’m fashionably late writing about this. Just like I was to the actual event. Note to self: update satnav maps (I drove straight to Brum from work via a route I don’t normally travel via - the bloody thing tried to take me the wrong way around two separate one-way systems, one in Wolverhampton and another one in Brum!) Anyway, I got there, and I wasn’t to worry, because people were there way after I said my goodbyes and headed home.

If you didn’t turn up on Monday night at the Dragon Inn, you missed out - around 30 bloggers and creative types descended on the pub for an evening of spontaneous conversation, anecdotes and other small issues… things like the future of blogging in and about the West Midlands, and how to promote the region outside of the clique of Birmingham bloggers (paraphrased from Podnosh’s Nick Booth, or Mr. Nosh as I think I might call him from now on).

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Unless something dire happens to obstruct my attendance, you can find me (along with a bunch of other friendly locals) at the second Brum Bloggers Meetup. I’ll give you fair warning now… It’s nestled just at the top end of the Gaybourhood (as my lesbian housemate calls it, and the name just happens to have caught on in our house, so that’s our name for Hurst Street). Whenever she nips down to The Fox on Hurst Street, I like to say that she’s ‘got a thirst for Hurst’, but I get odd stares and I suddenly feel the need to leave the room. You decide on that one.

To be fair, The Dragon Inn is actually nestled in The Arcadian Centre, so it’s almost separate - to get to the Arcadian car park, you just drive down (up?) Hurst Street and the entrance is there. Parking costs, according to the company which runs it, are about £1-£1.20 an hour, so put aside a fiver for parking if you’re driving there (like I’ll have to).

Now, for the brave, here are the event details:

Name: Brum bloggers Meetup 2
Tagline: or the first Birmingham Social Media Cafe?
Host: Birmingham Bloggers UK

Type: Meetings - Club/Group Meeting
Date: Monday, February 18, 2008
Time: 7:00pm - 9:00pm

Location: The Dragon Inn

Address:
Hurst Street
B5 4TD
Birmingham

Map: View

See you there!

Now, before we get started, I’m by no means a Microsoft shill (the Ubuntu sticker on my laptop should indicate that, that’s another discussion entirely however so let’s not go there). But, one thing I do like though are the pockets of resistance within Microsoft’s ranks; one such division is the development team who work on stuff like the Live project - Live Maps being one of the jewels in the crown. Obviously tons of money was poured into the project to make it a competitor for Google Maps, but it’s actually got some pretty standout features.

Someone told me that they’d revamped the interface, and he has - it’s now got far more “bird’s eye” views for the UK than it did previously. More interestingly, it’s got quite comprehensive bird’s eye views for all over the centre of Brum - but they’re at least two years’ old Still, if you’ve never been to Birmingham, it’s an easy way to get a much better idea of what the city looks like. I even did my route from my house to the Bullring in a spare five minutes

To get you started, here’s a link which’ll zoom you right in to the former Birmingham Eye (in front of the ICC, on Broad Street) - if you move left, you get to a large roundabout, also the location of UCE’s Birmingham Conservatoire (well, now BCU’s Conservatoire, but I still don’t acknowledge last year’s namechange) and, to the left of that, Victoria Square - but the beauty is you can always switch to overhead mode and get the street names! Top tip with Live Maps: you can change your orientation too, so you get a completely different perspective which can also help you look round tall buildings - click the N, S, E or W letters to rotate your view.

I’ve also collected together some of the city centre landmarks into a collection on Live Maps called Christopher’s Brum Landmarks, so you can spend a while browsing round and seeing what’s what and what’s where, as such - there are far more comprehensive listings and I encourage you to search around the subject (the ‘Explore Collections’ feature in Live Maps is your friend here!) but these landmarks should get you started. There’s a really comprehensive compilation of landmarks which someone has uploaded onto the Keyhole forums (and Live Maps has spidered, and can display) - to view it, click through to Birmingham Folder.kmz on Live Maps, or click here to load it directly.

I put loads of landmarks into my own Google Earth collection, but as I couldn’t get them to save in a single .kmz file I just kept them in Google Earth’s temporary files - but then lost them all when I upgraded Google Earth. I’ve not gotten round (as yet) to fully recreating this list, so apologies for the awful gaps in the Live Maps collection (I’ve not even put a pushpin into my own University faculty building! (it’s the TIC inside Millennium Point on Curzon Street)). However, I’ll add more landmarks to my own collection as I get time to do so, but as I’m avoiding doing work right now you’re all quite lucky - that’s an hour of quality time I just put into aggregating that list of landmarks!

Well, you’re in luck.

In a somewhat meta presentation at Town Hall, due to take place on Sunday the 20th of January at 2pm, a chap called Anthony Peers is going to deliver “an account of the architectural history of Town Hall from its construction through to it recent renaissance.” Apparently, “Anthony has been researching the history of the building for close to a decade and was involved in the planning of the recently completed scheme of repairs and improvements.”

Unfortunately I’m not in Birmingham that weekend - drat! However, it sounds really quite interesting, and it’s only £6 (£5 if you’re over 60, although I bet they have student concessions going if you ask nicely)… So, there’s no real excuse for you to avoid this talk if you’re truly interested in the redevelopment and reopening of one of Birmingham’s largest and best-known landmarks.

And, as a bonus, click the image above to get a full-sized version, taken (and stitched together) by yours truly. Enjoy

“Reinvigorating Longbridge’s industrial heritage while also attracting new hi-tech investors and companies will also play an important role in cementing the area’s status as the real engine room for a prosperous and ever-growing Midlands economy, able to compete on an international stage.”– Mike Whitby, Birmingham City Council leader

A smattering of pre-new-year goods news, I suppose… From BBC News, this morning:

Up to 10,000 jobs could be created and 1,400 homes and a shopping centre built to renovate part of Birmingham affected when a car plant closed down. About 6,000 workers lost their jobs in Longbridge when MG Rover collapsed in April 2005. Now a total of £500m could be spent if the 15-year plan goes ahead.

Government ministers have already outlined plans for a £20m innovation centre in the area which will make up part of that redevelopment. The plans are being developed by the Birmingham City, Worcestershire County and Bromsgrove Councils. Council leaders said they hoped the 15-year transformation of the area would encourage more people back to Longbridge.

Under the plans Longbridge railway station would also be revamped and Bournville College would also be relocated to the area.

£500 million? That’s not petty cash. I wonder where they’re going to get it from… Higher taxes? Or, perhaps they’ll get lucky with some ERDF/EUSF funding? One hopes for the latter but I think it’d be ill-advised to expect anything but the former. I definitely know that the only thing I’ve seen in the way of progress since Nanjing bought Longbridge is a near-total asset strip of the property, combined with a bit of bulldozing and, earlier this year, a VIP tour for some of the Nanjing execs around Birmingham centre (culminating in a ceremony attended by the Chinese, Council members and a the Press), so not much in the way of positive improvement has happened yet. I don’t even think any car production has been restarted there yet, which was their aim, wasn’t it?

 Or maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyway, my favourite bit from the article:

‘Determined to succeed’
A museum called the Austin Heritage Centre has also been proposed, which would celebrate the area’s history in car-making.

Woohoo! That’ll get the tourists rolling in!

First things first: I immensely dislike Christmas and everything it’s come to stand for… except for Chocolate Oranges in my stocking on Christmas Day. Mmm. However, I’m more than willing to promote events based around this season, because no doubt there’s far more people who aren’t grouchy old grumpies who actually enjoy these events! So, here’s a quick summary of what’s going on this Christmas (well, November) in Brum:

The Birmingham Christmas Lights Switch-On concert is being held from 3pm-7pm in front of Millennium Point on the 10th of November. If you’re wondering where Millennium Point is, it’s the building housing the IMAX cinema just down past the Masshouse building (basically, stand with your back to Selfridges, walk down the long straight Queensway and then bear right slightly, walking down the hill, you’ll get there in five minutes. Billed acts include McFly, Leona Lewis, Scouting For Girls and Sugababes get to turn the lights on on at 7:30pm. Wouldn’t want to miss that. The MAXMIX Diwali Celebrations take place on the 11th of November, and are again in front of Millennium Point from 3-7pm.

Here’s the best bit: the stuff-of-legend Pantomime Horse Race! The Panto Horse Grand National is always the talk of the town and draws some sizeable crowds if the weather’s not crap! It also helps raise some money for Children In Need, so it’s for a very worthwhile cause. There’s usually some foam too, so if you’re going either as a participant or a spectator, prepare to get messy.

This year, the race is taking place on the 16th of November, from 6:30pm-10pm (and although I’d guess the route is still via Colmore Row, finishing just over from the Town Hall, the official listing is “Broad Street / Centenary Square”). There’s also a very pretty-looking Broad Street Canal Boat Light Parade being held on the 9th of December along the canal running from the NIA to The Mailbox (from 5:30pm to 6:15pm). I might head along to that to take some snaps. I know it’s short notice, but I only just found out myself!

So, weather permitting, use these events as an excuse to get out the house and enjoy some pre-December Christmas niceties, courtesy of various local businesses and your City Council. And don’t forget to say thankyou afterwards.

I’ll say it loud, and I’ll say it clear: I like Birmingham Central Library. It’s a real landmark. Being built from concrete, it’s a bit dirty here and there but it has a real sense of character, plus it’s pretty cool inside.

I got lost in there the first time I went in.

The current location of Birmingham Central Library, snapped on the 2nd of May, 2007.

Credit: BCC

However, it’s looking more and more like the existing BCL is going to be knocked down to make way for a new development, with an estimated cost of about £193 million (this isn’t such a long time after they picked up the remainder of the tab for the expensive Town Hall renovation, something like £18 million on top of the EU and Lottery funding). The Guardian picked up on this story a long time ago, and published an article to that extent (and while it’s dated, it’s still relevant, so it’s worth a read). A little has changed though from the original article. This is how the Guardian report reads:

Still dominating Chamberlain Square and squaring up to some of the city’s best Victorian and Edwardian buildings, the library is to be replaced by gleaming office towers. The Richard Rogers partnership, meanwhile, has been commissioned to design a new £130m library at Millennium Point, Eastside, Digbeth. The Rogers building - a stately ultra-modern galleon - will be the flagship of Birmingham’s new cultural quarter, set across a ring-road and web of railway lines from Chamberlain Square.

This has changed slightly - insofar as the new plans talk about the location being a shared site along with the Birmingham Rep, “with the library and theatre joining together and sharing a number of facilities to create a unique centre for knowledge, learning and culture.” Hmm. “Subject to Cabinet’s approval of the proposals (on 22 October), the next step will see a project manager and design team appointed to take the project forward and conduct an international search for an architect so that design work can get underway by summer 2008, and the new centre completed by 2013.”

More info’s available on the BCC web site’s “Library Of Birmingham” pages, and this is where you’d see it should it be built:

The council’s plans include converting the space between the Rep and Baskerville House, currently used as a car park (which is kinda useful!) into a massive Library. However, what’s wrong with Birmingham Central Library being in Chamberlain Square? It’s a great venue, the vista as you stand with the Birmingham Gallery to your back is really something (with the “inverted ziggurat” of the library towering over you and curving around the long ampitheatre-like steps down to the fountain).

I can see the need to put one’s best foot forward, and as Britain’s Second City, I fully agree with that. However, a cost of £193m for a new building on property already serving a useful purpose - parking is already hard enough in the city without another car park being bulldozed… Is it really necessary?

The Council rationalise their thinking by informing us that:

Birmingham’s existing Central Library is the busiest public library in Britain and the city’s most visited public building. However there are major problems with the building, which was built in the early 1970s. The fabric is in very poor condition and the design unsuitable for modern-day needs. The storage capacity and environment, and level of public access for archives, photography and rare printed collections are unacceptably poor given their national and international significance. The Library of Birmingham will provide an exceptional solution to this.

So just closing the Library, gutting it and renovating it then reopening it isn’t enough? Oh wait, I forgot, you want to convert the prime real estate in Chamberlain Square into office blocks, I forgot about that.

If you want to support those who would keep things the way they are, there’s a Facebook group where all the cool people hang out. According to Love Concreation, “Friends of Central Library are proposing to have a meeting on Tuesday 20th November at 6pm - location TBC, somewhere in Bham town centre.” So, keep your eyes peeled if you’d like to take part.

Yes, Gigbeth begins tomorrow, and I’ll be there (helping represent Revolver Records, who are also one of the event’s sponsors) - I won’t be hard to spot, I’ll be the one who looks like he’s the odd one out and running round with a camera! See you there.

Following on from my recent article about the UCE -> BCU rebrand, an enterprising chap named Ronald Iguana (did a Deed Poll come into that?) has gone and compiled a logography of my university’s various logos since its inception in 1971. Worth a look!

I’ve been lazy recently - must update more! I’ve been sitting on this stuff for a while now, and I thought it’d be time to blog about this (especially considering I told them I would!)

If you were watching the local events calendar recently, you might have noticed that the  2007 Birmingham Festival of Xtreme Building (now finished, sadly) had an events space where guest shows could come and exhibit. I was just walking past, walking down to take some photos of the area around the TIC in Millennium Point for a future blog, when I noticed this exhibition going on, so I dropped by. Admission was free.

I was amazed to find what I did - a cornucopia of little mysteries (and one copy of Great Mysteries), all with their own stories to tell. The exhibition was entitled “Belongings”, an exhibition (and indirect celebration) of all things Lost and Found.

Katharine Kavanagh, a Curator
(she promised me the specs were
hers, but I don’t believe her!)

Put on by two UCE graduates, Natalie Wilson and Katharine Kavanagh (under the moniker of Kipipeo arts), the exhibition’s sole purpose was to bring to the surface all those things people discard or lose, and give you a little food for thought, to take a minute to just wonder the situations and circumstances that resulted in the items being where they were. All of the items were tagged with the date of, and where, they were found (or discovered), plus any backstory if there was any. The majority of items were completely anonymous, which lent them a definite air of curiosity (and I like curious mysteries!) When I asked Katharine about where they’d collected their items, she explained to me how she’s a bit of a hoarder (like me!) and that she and Nat had either found items at random or gone to public places (libraries, railway stations, the main Birmingham bus terminuses, etc) and just used their eyes. They had a trunk with some ‘Restricted Items’ in, things which might be dangerous for little kiddies to get their mitts on (good idea), but they also had some rather curious finds like a woman’s handbag (left in Birmingham Central Library about 3 years ago) which had not just her purse in, but her cards, her passport (!), her various forms of identification, a Visa (which had expired a while back) and some letters from what I guessed were her sponsors. You can see the handbag, and the trunk, in the photo of Kat to the right.

I totally clicked with Kat’s mindset - I’m a serial hoarder too, I love collecting things and never throwing anything away because you never quite know when that oddly-shaped screw or collection of elastic bands might just come in handy, and this festival was as much a celebration of not throwing anything away as it was discovering items which would otherwise remain locked away in windowless back rooms in public buildings, only to see the light of day when they were either discarded into a bin or tossed away into a dump. To recycle all these curios in the way in which they did meant a lot of legwork and effort on their behalf (they apparently spent many months collecting before the exhibition began), but it was most definitely worth it. For the items which were identifiable (like the handbag with the passport in), Kat said that they were going to do their best to return those items to their original owner, which was a nice touch.

There were some items I would’ve loved to take away for myself (and she said that if I wanted to take something I was more than welcome), but I wanted all the 78s but Kat professed to have claimed them herself because the 78 player was hers I can’t take a record from someone, so I let them be, even though she offered to let me have one to take away, but that would have ruined the collection. So, as a fellow hoarder, and an avid (nay, obsessed) vinyl collector, I let her keep them all, because I know how much it means to someone to have a record which is subsequently taken away from them for one reason or another. I did snap loads of photos though, so I did get to take something!

Here’s the best (imho) photos I took (there’s more available, including shots of the most important pages from their explanatory Portfolio) on my Flickr page):

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All in all? A very worthwhile afternoon, even if it was a bit overcast! Can’t blame them for the weather, it didn’t rain though. The event was on all weekend, but I never even knew about it until I walked past on the Sunday (I left just after the exhibition closed). I had a great time, and it was an enjoyable morsel of brain food. So,  the moral of all this? Always be prepared to deviate from your original plan when out in a city, and keep your eyes peeled because you never know what you might stumble upon.